You Were Never Really Here

Lynne Ramsay delivers with unflinching heft in her newest work, whose 70s American bones have invited comparison with Taxi Driver. Welding a hulking Joaquin Phoenix to Jonny Greenwood’s menacing score, You Were Never Really Here's fever dream swirls around Joe, a hired gun who enters a seedy world of corruption when a rescue mission for a young girl goes awry. Her signature poeticism in full gear, Ramsay achieves the rare feat of deepening the vertigo of her underworld’s accumulative violence.Tickets: $7

Like its title, the densely suggestive Western is loaded with ambiguity. The film follows a group of German construction workers as they venture into the remote countryside of Bulgaria to build a project, setting off tensions with the wary locals. Grisebach's skill comes to the fore in the canny games she plays with audience expectations and genre conventions, pulling off more than a few genuine surprises and unexpectedly moving moments.Tickets: $7